(ThyBlackMan.com)
In the New Testament of the Bible, Barabbas is a prisoner who was chosen by the crowd over Jesus to be released by Pontius Pilate before the Passover feast. Barabbas is mentioned in all four Gospels and is described as a notorious prisoner, a murderer, and an insurrectionist.
Election Highlights: Hate is UP!
According to the esteemed Brookings Institute, there is a clear correlation between President Elect Donald Trump’s campaign events and incidents of prejudiced violence. The FBI data shows that since Trump’s 2016 election, there has been an anomalous spike in hate crimes concentrated in counties where Trump won by larger margins. It was the second largest uptick in hate crimes in the 25 years for which data is available, second only to the spike after September 11, 2001. Though hate crimes are typically most frequent in the summer, in 2016 they peaked in the fourth quarter (October-December). This new higher rate of hate crimes continued through to 2024.
I never thought that I would see something like this happen in real life. The way people picked Trump over good sense kind of reminds me of a classic Bible story where the people picked the desperado Barabbas instead of Jesus. It is weird how history keeps happening again and again, just wearing different clothes each time.
My Political Science teacher at Illinois State University, Dr. Gordon, used to say that democracy was like a garden – “you’ve got to take care of it, or the weeds take over”. Well, it looks like we got ourselves a whole lot of weeds now. The funny thing is (although it is not really ha-ha funny but more strange funny), we knew exactly what we were getting into this time around. Nobody can say that they didn’t know what Trump was all about.
You know what is really getting to me – the way everybody acts like Election Day this year was just another Tuesday – like we did not just hand the keys back to someone who got charged with all those crimes. When I was a kid, getting in trouble at school was a big deal – now we have someone running the country who has more charges than a battery store.
The Cases Against Trump
Former President Donald J. Trump’s election to a second term means the pending legal proceedings against him could be postponed or derailed altogether. The two Federal cases led by the Special Counsel Jack Smith, who accused Mr. Trump of subverting the 2020 election and mishandling classified documents, are likely to be dropped, as Mr. Trump has promised to have his Justice Department fire Mr. Smith. His two State criminal cases could be paused or ended under Justice Department’s guidelines that prohibit prosecution of a sitting president. He faces several civil judgments and lawsuits, but presidents have historically been shielded by the Supreme Court in civil litigation.
The Divide Lives Next Door
The streets feel different in our post-election existence, like after a big storm passes but before you know how bad the damage is. Folks are walking around looking lost – some tearing down their yard signs like they are embarrassed, while others are putting up even bigger ones like they just won the lottery. It feels like somebody drew an invisible line down the middle of America, and we all picked our sides.
The scariest part isn’t even Trump himself; it is how many people looked at everything that happened and said “yep, that’s our guy.” It makes me wonder if we have always been this way, or if something broke somewhere along the line. Maybe we just got tired of trying to be good all the time.
My grandpa once told me something that stuck. He said, “sometimes people choose what they want over what they need.” I didn’t get it then, but I sure do now. We chose what felt good over what was right, just like those folks picked Barabbas because he made them feel powerful.
The news media keeps talking about institutions and systems with a view to the blame game, but what I see is simpler. We are like kids who got mad at the referee and decided to play without rules. The problem is that games without rules usually end up with somebody getting hurt really bad.
Every morning I check my phone, half expecting to see some new crazy thing happening. The weird part is how normal it all feels now. Remember when a president tweeting something wild was big news? Now, it is just another Tuesday (or any other day ending in ‘y’).
Some smart persons once wrote that democracies don’t die fast – they sort of fade away, like old photographs. Each day, things get a tiny bit worse, but so slowly that you barely notice it until one day you wake up and realize the pictures are almost gone. That is kind of how this feel.
As a teacher of History, I keep thinking about what we’ are going to tell the kids in school about this era. How do you explain that we knew exactly what would happen and did it anyway? It’s like touching a hot stove twice and being surprised it burns both times.
The thing about choosing Barabbas (both then and now) is that it wasn’t just one choice – it was a whole bunch of little choices that led up to one big mistake. We didn’t just wake up one day and decided to throw everything away. We did it bit by bit, compromise by compromise.
Watching The Storm Roll In
My youth mentor, who teaches Economics, says we are living through what the future children will read about in textbooks. This makes me wonder what kids in another twenty years from now will think when they flip to this chapter. How do you explain to someone that we all saw the wreck coming, like watching a car crash in slow-motion, but just… stood there? Wild, right?
It is like that same feeling you get before a hurricane – you know, the one where the air gets really heavy and quiet. Half of my friends are stocking up on supplies and deleting their social media, while the other half are acting like it is New Year’s Eve. Crazy how we are all looking at the same dark clouds but seeing different storms.
You want to know the really messed up part? We did this to ourselves. Nobody forced us. Nobody tricked us (not really, anyway). We looked at what happened the last time, looked at all the court stuff, looked at everything he said he would do if he got back in as President… and we still said “yeah, let’s do that again.”
I keep thinking about how future individuals will look back at this period of time. Will they shake their heads at how dumb we were? Or will they understand that sometimes people choose the devil they know over the change they need? Maybe they will just wonder why nobody stopped it from happening.
The Morning After Tomorrow
The amusing thing about the Barabbas story is that everybody remembers the choice, but nobody talks much about what happened afterwards. Maybe that is because the “after” part is always messy and complicated and not as interesting as the big moment. Well, we’re about to find out what our “after” looks like.
My social media feed is giving me a whiplash – one post celebrating with champagne emojis, while the next is showing Canadian real estate listings going up. It is funny how we all get to wake up tomorrow and still live next door to each other.
The truth is we did this to ourselves. Clean and simple. No Russians, no conspiracy, no broken voting machines to blame it on. Just regular folks walking into voting booths and making a choice with both eyes open. And maybe that’s what scares me the most – knowing we chose this path on purpose, knowing exactly where it would lead. Oh…the smell of Democracy! Stevie Wonder’s song of a bygone era seems perfectly appropriate for the moment…Heaven Help Us All!
Associate Editor; Stanley G. Buford
Feel free to connect with this brother via Twitter; Stanley G. and also facebook; http://www.facebook.com/sgbuford.
Also his email addy is; StanleyG@ThyBlackMan.com.
